October News

Posted by: Thomas on Oct 7, 2009

ZIQ 247 Brackles – Rawkus October 5th

Following on swiftly from the ‘LHC’ 12 on Planet Mu, Brackles steps up once again with two dayglo, adventurous tracks that are shamelessly built for making people dance like mad.This 12 and the first ep show a seriously fun direction for Brackles’ music that hint at a craft learnt from the eclectic nature of his dj sets and his love of 2-step garage.The first track ‘Rawkus’ does this by pitting galloping funky drums against smeary synths and bassy old school bleeps, carefully dropping in the occasional cut up vocal sample as a nod to 2-step. It all holds together albeit in a seriously drunken manner, evoking Detroit masters Derrick May or Kenny Larkin at their best.‘Air Pie’ is a track that sounds like dubstep after a few expressos. Nervy and energetic, its stop-start rhythms hark back to 2-step but the claps are pure grime and the way the track builds is prime time techno. Two thrilling tracks that take the dubstep sound in new directions.

October 12th ZIQ244 Faltydl – Bravery

Following up from his great June debut album rather swiftly, ‘Love is a Liability’ Faltydl, aka New York’s Drew Lustman comes with this incredible mini L.P. weighing in as a heavyweight new talent.

‘Bravery’ contrasts quite dramatically with his debut, especially since these eight tracks are brand new, recorded as recently as three months ago.The album works at different tempos but still works with Faltydl’s featherweight combinations of melodic synths, glitzy garage samples and complex programmed beats and effects, bringing a particularly American take on the British Bass music Drew is obsessed with, that actually goes someway to genuinely challenge its dominance.

Faltydl is a great new signing for Planet Mu, and an artist that really stands out from the crowd, through sheer quality and creativity. The accolades in the press he’s had recently go some way to qualify this, especially when it’s difficult for an underground artist making experimenting in dance music to get attention.

Subeena aka Sabina Plamenova is a London based producer and DJ who has a background in dubstep with releases on her own immigrant recordings label; here she extends here sound exclusvley for Planet Mu with the aid of some guests.Solidify is something of a supergroup collaboration. The track is split three ways with Om’mas Keith from Sa-Ra Creative Partners on keys, Jamie Woon on vocals and Subeena providing drums bass and subtle production.Jamie’s honeyed soul harmonies glide across pools of spacy Rhodes keys and Subeena’s tough detailed insectal beats and bass, it’s a beautiful track that recalls the stoned soul of D’Angelo but with free floating state of the art digital production and abstract depth.

The B side ‘Analyse’ is just Subeena. It’s bittersweet, melodic synths, mixed with crunchy drums wouldn’t be out of place on artificial intelligence era Warp releases, were it not for the traces of dubstep in the sparingly used delays and the sub bassline that frame the tune. It’s a complete pleasure.

Planet Mu is very pleased to have Ikonika aka Sara Abdel Hamid’s first proper release on another label outside of Hyperdub. Smuck has been given a home on the label alongside Ikonika’s remix of Eero Johannes for this 12”.Smuck is a workout on Ikonika’s sweet and sour, curdled sound, with ever changing off key melodies and metal-like synth guitar lines over sweet chilled chords. The track takes her penchant for melodies that border on the atonal as far as it can go, like a sophisticated take on 8 bar grime.

Her remix of Eero Johannes ‘We Could Be Skweeeerooos’ on the b side simply switches up the tempo of the original , makes the rhythm nice and bouncy and tightens up the original adding some trademark bent melodies and a see-sawing bassline. The end result is a linear, melodic track that feels like it’s somewhere between Wiley and Aphex at their sweetest.

So that's all the releases for the month. Mike is busy working on some really exciting releases for next year. For anyone based in the Netherlands we have a BIG Planet Mu Night at Doornroosje in Nijmegen.